Teresa Hill - Her Sister's Fiancé

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To everyone at The Whole You, Rutherfordton, NC.

Without a doubt, some of the coolest, nicest,

funniest, kindest, most interesting people in the

world. (The only other group I’ve ever found that

I’d describe that way are romance writers.)

I love you all. We don’t really have to leave, right?

And for Michael, because that’s

just the way he is and because he asked,

I will write words I have never before used in

all of my twenty-three published novels:

Heaving Bosoms.

Heaving Bosoms.

Heaving Bosoms.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Coming Next Month

The little old ladies by the picnic tables glared at him like he was pond scum.

Joe Reed tried to ignore them as he stood under a giant magnolia tree eating a hot dog at the town’s May Day picnic, trying to look like the old him—respectable, predictable, an all-around good guy.

Wait a minute. He leaned to the right to get a better look at one of the little old ladies.

Was that a friend of his grandmother’s?

He groaned.

His grandmother was hard of hearing and not quite living in the present. She often thought she was a girl looking for her poodle, CoCo, who’d been dead for seventy-five years. Joe had hoped she’d never get the whole story of his downfall, but if one of her friends from the nursing home was here, she’d probably be treated to the whole unsavory thing. Which meant, he had to hope his grandmother either wouldn’t hear what the woman had to say or that she’d forget it very quickly, both highly likely.

Still, he really didn’t want her to know.

Yeah, now that he’d gotten a better look, he was afraid that was her friend Marge and…maybe she was coming this way, probably to give him a piece of her mind. He turned around hoping to disappear, but the next moment, he got nailed in the shoulders and dragged off into the woods by two men.

Not strangers, unfortunately.

He’d rather be mugged.

Not that anybody got mugged in Magnolia Falls, Georgia.

But he’d rather.

“Hey, come on,” he tried.

Wherever they were going, he could at least get there under his own power. But his captors would have none of that, and one of them was armed, so he stopped arguing and let them do what they wanted.

They released him a half mile later, dumped him with his back against a tree, then backed up to face him, both glaring.

One was a cop.

Joe used to date his sister.

The other was a minister.

He was now married to the sister Joe used to date. Very happily married, by all accounts, so, as Joe saw it, Ben couldn’t object too much to the fact that Joe and Kate had broken up. Otherwise, Ben and Kate would never have gotten together.

It was just the way in which Joe and Kate had broken up that was the problem.

That was where the other sister came into it. Kathie.

There was a third sister, Kim, the baby of the family, but Joe had never laid a hand on her.

It was the middle one who had been his downfall. Still was, judging by the way the people of their little town were treating him six months after the whole debacle.

“We have a problem,” the brother who was the cop, Jax, said.

“Whatever it is, I didn’t do it,” Joe insisted, feeling like he was in third grade and had gotten caught pulling Celia Rawlins’ hair. Not that he’d actually done it. She had just kept accusing him of it to get him into trouble. His mother said it was a crude form of flirtation, but he just hadn’t understood. He didn’t like being in trouble. He really was a good guy. Not that anybody believed that anymore.

“Oh, yes, you did,” Jax said, looking as big and intimidating as he had in high school, whether he’d been plowing through linebackers like they were zombies or dating the girls of the cheerleading squad one after another. Everybody got a turn. He’d made it look easy, still did.

Joe had been quieter, spent more time on his studies, been president of the senior class and valedictorian, a chess champion, a force to be reckoned with in debate, none of which had helped him get girls.

He was not a ladies’ man, not at all the type to be engaged to one sister and sneaking around kissing the other.

He still wasn’t sure how it had happened.

Temporary insanity was all he’d managed to come up with.

It still made his head spin when he thought about it too much, so he tried not to. He was a bank president, for God’s sake. The youngest in the state when he’d been named to the job. Voted most likely to succeed. Mr. Straightlaced.

What had happened to that man?

“I really didn’t do anything,” Joe tried again.

He hadn’t called anyone, hadn’t talked to anyone, hadn’t seen anyone. He’d lived the life of a monk for six months, trying to keep his head down and do his job and not give anyone reason to talk about him, not ever again.

Not that it had stopped any of the gossip.

He felt like he’d been branded for life, would never live down what had happened.

He looked at Jax, seething, his gun at his side, then to Ben, the calmer of the two. Surely a minister wouldn’t be a part of beating the crap out of him here in the woods, would he? Not that Joe didn’t think he deserved a beating. Honestly, he was surprised Jax had waited this long.

But that was it, a few punches? They weren’t going to really hurt him, right? At least, he didn’t think so.

He looked to Ben for help.

“It would probably be better if you just listened for a while,” Ben said, looking calm as could be, like he took part in dragging people off into the woods all the time, which seemed quite unminister-like to Joe.

Kate had said her new husband had a way of making things happen. Surely she hadn’t meant this.

“This is the way it is,” Ben said, smiling a bit while Jax scowled. “Kate isn’t happy.”

Joe puzzled over that. He hadn’t done anything to Kate, either. Had barely spoken to her, hadn’t gotten anywhere near her, and if Kate wasn’t happy, wasn’t that more Ben’s problem than Joe’s, given the fact that Ben was her husband now?

“Well, she would be happy—perfectly happy—married to me,” Ben said. “Except for one thing.”

Joe could just imagine what that one thing was.

“And Kim’s not happy,” Jax said. “Most important of all to you, I’m not happy, and I could hurt you so easily.”

Ben stepped between them at that point. “And if my wife and her family aren’t happy, of course I’m not happy,” he said.

Okay. Joe hadn’t gotten anywhere near any of them, either, but he nodded, to show that he was listening and taking it all in.

“We couldn’t possibly be happy right now because a member of our family isn’t here,” Jax said.